FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT RYUTARO HASHIMOTO - PAGE 2

Expounding upon the importance of free trade and delivering Air Force contracts that will support thousands of jobs here, President Clinton came to vote-rich California this weekend for the 22nd time since taking office. Mixing politicking with statesmanship, Clinton met with aerospace workers to deliver contracts worth $1.8 billion for eight new C-17 cargo planes and then held a get-acquainted meeting with Japan's new prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto. Trade issues, always a thorny part of relations between the United States and Japan, were brought into sharper focus during Saturday's meeting by recent comments made by Republican presidential contender Patrick Buchanan.

After years of coaxing Japan to change, the U.S. government may finally have won over the Japanese people. But now all sides--the Americans, the Japanese and the rest of the world--must wait to see if real change is coming. Both world governments and markets are in for a tense several weeks of waiting following the defeat Sunday of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in elections to the upper house of parliament and the subsequent resignation of the prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto.

The experts had considered Ryutaro Hashimoto, a former prime minister often blamed for applying excessive shock antidotes to an ailing economy, an unlikely candidate to lead Japan out of its long slump. But times change. Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party is desperate to find a messiah, and Hashimoto's economic recipes, vilified when he was prime minister three years ago, sound less radical today. Suddenly, the debonair, self-assured politician has become the favorite to succeed incumbent Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who finally agreed earlier this month to vacate a post to which he tenaciously clung despite an approval rating that plummeted from 36 percent to 4 percent.

- Japan's Finance Ministry dropped plans to sell 1.95 million shares of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. stock this year. Finance Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said the decision was based on various factors, including the slump in NTT share prices.

Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, 58, whose confrontational personality is well known to U.S. trade negotiators, was elected leader of Japan's biggest party Friday, putting him in line to be the next prime minister. As president of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, Hashimoto becomes a leading candidate if the Socialist incumbent, Tomiichi Murayama, steps aside.

Talks resume: Facing a sanctions threat at month's end, senior Japanese officials returned to the trade negotiating table Wednesday, but United Statesofficials made it clear that no deals were expected this week. U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown were scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon with Japanese Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. Kantor then will hold talks Thursday in Los Angeles with Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono.

Deal reached: The United States and Japan have reached a final agreement on improving access to Japan's $4.5 billion market for flat glass, Japanese trade minister Ryutaro Hashimoto told a press conference Monday in Washington. The two nations had reached an agreement in principle on the dispute on Oct. 1 but then had failed to work out details within 30 days as originally intended.

Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto won the agreement of his ruling coalition Saturday for a plan to bail out failed mortgage firms with taxpayers' money, the biggest blot on the country's economy. The agreement, essential to this year's budget, still has one more hurdle to clear in the Diet (parliament) this week when the opposition plans to mount an all-out attack, including a possible filibuster of the debate, to derail it. Newspaper editorials Saturday sharply criticized the plan, predicting growing public anger because the government could not provide a definite figure on how much money would be needed from tax revenues to solve the issue.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and nine other politicians received a total of $685,000 in donations from groups linked to a bribery scandal, a national newspaper said Thursday. Without citing its sources, the Mainichi Shimbun said Hashimoto's two political organizations received $41,000 between 1990 and 1993 from the groups, which are linked to a nursing home developer who is accused of bribing health ministry officials to obtain government subsidies. Hashimoto said he had done nothing improper in accepting the money, but nonetheless had ordered an investigation.

Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama will quit in April and hand his job over to Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to boost the governing coalition's chances of winning the next election, Japan's largest circulation newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, reported Sunday. The newspaper quoted unidentified government and party sources as saying the plan was agreed upon by leaders of the coalition's three parties.But Kyodo News Service said Murayama denied the report. Murayama heads an unusual coalition of his Socialist Party, another minority party and the Socialists' archrivals, the conservative Liberal Democrats.